


Where the Wild Things Are

by Snickfic



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016-2017 NHL Season, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Traits, Feelings, M/M, Multi, Pining, Pittsburgh Penguins, Polyamory Negotiations, Soul Bond, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 15:02:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15221753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Going wild is like this: sometimes, if a person has too much emotion to contain in their human form, it leaks into a different form. Now Olli's only shot of keeping himself under control is bonding with someone else who's gone wild, and Dumo and Tanger are the only other wild guys on the team.





	Where the Wild Things Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [downjune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/gifts).



> A late treat for the Poly Hockey Exchange! Huge thanks to my beta, who helped me beat this into shape and also gave me the title, which is PERFECT.

Down by two after two periods of play, and nobody was happy about it. Brian had blown his coverage and allowed a breakaway that Muzz saved his ass on, and the Rangers had scored a power play goal on his watch. That was what he was thinking about—should he have dropped to the ice there, to try and prevent the cross-seam pass? Should he have relied on his stick instead?—when he heard growling farther down the tunnel.

The hair rose on the back of Brian’s neck. Kris was a suddenly-impatient presence behind him and at the back of his mind: _move faster_. Except the words weren’t there, only the urgency and sense of command. Normally Brian would have given Kris shit about trying to order people around when he didn’t even have an A. Tonight Brian just obeyed.

“Move on, move on,” Geno bellowed, directing the traffic around some detour up ahead. The growling was coming from there. Brian felt that same shiver of unease as before. As he got close, he caught the scent of someone angry and uncontrolled, on the edge of going wild. He peered through a loose perimeter of bodies, standing well out from—Olli. Olli who had the nubs of tusks poking over his upper lip.

Olli who might have started out angry but was now fucking terrified.

“Hey,” Brian said, muscling through. He could feel Kris hard on his heels, not even trying to reel him back. Somebody else grabbed at Brian’s arm, but he shrugged them off. There weren’t a lot of people on this team who could move Brian when he didn’t want to be moved, anymore. “Hey,” he repeated, slowing a couple feet away from Olli. He was backed against a wall. Not good.

“Move out,” Kris said, and behind Brian there were the slow sounds of dispersal.

Brian dropped slowly to an unthreatening crouch, balancing carefully on his skates. “Hey, Olli,” he said. Olli’s eyes flicked to him, seeming to see him for the first time. “Those are some fucking chicklets, man.” Brian tapped at his own lower lip, over the canine.

Olli eyed him dubiously, and then he looked down the hall, where everyone had gone.

“They’re not coming back. It’s just you and me. And Tanger,” Brian amended, because he could feel Kris off somewhere behind him, keeping watch. “We’re just going to hang out with you for a while, if that’s okay.” Brian settled onto his ass on the rubber mat, stretching his legs out in front of him. “You wanna sit down, too?”

Olli’s gaze flicked from him to Kris to the hallway—both directions—and then back to Brian again. 

“So that period sucked, right?” Brian said casually. “Fuck Kreider right in the ass.”

Olli didn’t appear to have any particular opinion of Kreider just now, but he listened as Brian unraveled the last period, the goal Brian allowed on the PK, the stick he took to the ribs that was for sure going to bruise. Slowly that rigid fear holding Olli upright began to relax, until he slid slowly down the wall. He hugged one knee. He still had the tusks—stubby ivory pale and unmarred by blood or dirt or damage. Brand new. That dangerous, wild sourness in the air wasn’t quite so strong anymore, though.

Finally, into a pause, Olli said, “Dumo?” The sound came out a little mangled around the tusks. His jaw was broader, too, and flatter. The whole shape of his head had changed—that had to fuck with your speech a little bit.

“Hey, buddy.” Brian couldn’t help grinning in relief, even though baring his teeth wasn’t necessarily a good idea.

“What’s happening to me?” Olli asked. His voice had picked up a new undertone, deeper and earthier.

“You’re a little wild,” Kris said from just behind Brian’s shoulder. 

“No, I’m not,” Olli said, through his tusks. “We’re not—we don’t get like that.”

 _We_. Finns, Brian guessed. And _like that_ , well. Brian wasn’t going to let that bother him. “We need to get you to the trainers.”

“We have a game. Don’t we?” Olli added, in sudden alarm. “It’s not over yet, is it?” His eyes were going wide again with that free-falling terror.

“It’s over for you,” Kris said. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” Olli said, very quietly.

“You ready to go? Because I really gotta piss, dude,” Brian said. He took a gamble and prodded at Olli with the toe of his skate.

He won. Olli wrinkled his nose. Then he took Kris’s offered hand and let Kris pull him to his feet. “I can play,” Olli said, clearly now, with no new teeth in the way. He looked like himself again, except for being even paler than usual, and still just this side of freaked.

“Nope. Trainers.”

“Fuck,” Olli said—not happy, but human. Normal. 

Brian pushed to his feet and followed them down the mats until they arrived at the doors to the trainers’ room. Then he felt that now-familiar nudge in his mind. _You go. I’ve got this._ He gave Kris a sharp look, but Kris was focused on Olli and made no sign of remembering Brian was even there.

Then, clearly amused: _Go piss. Your bladder’s killing me._

Face heating, Brian went.

\--

Brian rode home with Kris that night. He didn’t always, still kept his own condo uptown, but tonight it seemed necessary. In the car, Kris filled him in on what he’d learned—all unofficial, of course. Officially he had no rights to information about Olli’s anything, but nobody was going to keep the team’s most senior wild member out of the loop. There were no surprises, anyway. They’d try all the usual stopgaps and see what took.

There was more going through Kris’s mind, but he wasn’t letting Brian in on any of it. Brian tried to keep from wondering about it. He’d had a lot of practice, the past few months.

They ate their bedtime calories, brushed their teeth side by side, comfortably domestic like Brian had never dreamed they could be when management had first proposed this partnership slash bond, months ago. There was a lot about Kris that Brian’s dreams had fallen short of. 

It was only as Kris was actually turning the covers down that he said, “They’re fucking idiots. None of that shit’s going to work.”

“It could work,” Brian said, half out of contrariness. Kris brought it out in him. “Sometimes it does, right?”

“I think it’s all just bullshit, so people feel better.”

Brian sat next to him on the edge of the bed, letting his legs fall open so his knee brushed Kris’s. “It worked for you.” 

Kris gave him a bitter, twisted smile. Brian could feel that same bitter twist in his stomach. He breathed carefully around it, counting: three seconds in, five seconds out. The counting was habit now, pure reflex, though Kris almost never needed it anymore. 

Ruefully Kris shook his head, tracing around a fingernail rather than look at Brian anymore. “It didn’t really work. I was just hanging on, you know? Until you.” There was some great swell of feeling under the words. Kris had never bothered to explain or articulate to Brian what the feeling was, nor let Brian get close enough to touch it for himself. 

There were parts of Kris that Brian could touch just fine, though. He slid his hand across Kris’s thigh, and when Kris turned, Brian caught his mouth in a kiss. Kris sighed out, long and heavy, and then he opened his mouth to Brian. 

Afterwards, jizz mostly wiped away, lamps switched off, Kris whispered in Brian’s head, _They’re going to ask us to take him._

Brian’s heart rate picked up a little. _Yeah. I know._

Long after Kris’s breath had evened out, Brian was still staring into the dark.

\--

Nobody saw much of Olli for a while. He was on IR, missing on road trips, sequestered from the rest of the team when they were home. Brian smelled him sometimes—a musky odor all his own, a little stronger than your normal sweaty hockey player but not nearly as strong as the stench baked into all their gear. Just a different note on the air that Brian caught sometimes and tried not to think about.

It was almost four weeks before they got the inevitable calls from their respective agents about Rutherford’s offer. “You’re cool with this, right?” Kris asked, on the drive in the next morning. 

He asked it in words, right out loud, and there was nothing for Brian to say but, “Sure, man.”

“I just—that kid has been through so much shit already.” Kris’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I think he needs us.”

And what the hell could Brian say to that?

Then they walked into Rutherford’s office, and, and all Brian’s unvoiced reservations—shit he wasn’t even admitting to himself yet, much less to Kris—curled up and died. Because Olli was sitting in the office, too, gaze fixed on the desktop with such misery Brian never wanted to see it on a person’s face again in his life. “Hey, man,” Brian said, taking the middle chair. Kris took the far one without comment.

“Hey,” Olli said.

Brian wanted to take him home and cook him things and nuzzle him until he smiled, and—okay, that was definitely his inner wolf talking. 

Nothing Rutherford said was a surprise. None of the team’s efforts were helping Olli. In fact, he’d been losing more control in the past week than the previous three weeks combined. “I’m just frustrated,” Olli muttered. 

“Very understandable,” Rutherford said. “Fortunately, there are some things we haven’t tried yet.”

“You want us to bond with Olli,” Brian said.

Going wild was like this: sometimes, if a person had too much emotion to contain in their human form, it leaked into a different form. A wild form. Some were recognizable: Brian’s long toothy jaw, dull claws, and bushy tail were definitely something wolfy. Some weren’t: Kris’s mish-mash of raptor features and bitter, skunk-like musk that rose up when he got really pissed didn’t seem to match any natural animal anyone knew. 

Either way, going wild was like rolling your ankle: once you did it the first time, weakened that structural integrity, you’d always be prone to doing it again. Pro athletes were known to be especially susceptible, in contact sports most of all. No one was really surprised when Kris Letang turned wild in an after-whistle scrum his rookie year; it had barely crossed Brian’s radar.

They were only a little more surprised when Brian lost it on the ice, a few minutes after the final horn sounded in San Jose. Half the other guys were crying, too, and soon Brian was going to take the Cup for a skate, and he just went a little hairy all over. He’d woken up two days later with a muzzle and fangs and no hangover. He’d woken up three days after that with an offer from the Pens: did he want to solidify the team and also his place on it? How would he feel about bonding with Letang?

Nobody told Brian then that he’d start playing with Letang, too, but everybody knew about the Sedins, about Marchand and Bergeron. He could connect the dots.

“It looks like one of our more likely approaches at this point,” Rutherford was saying, confirming all of Kris’s suspicions. Those techniques for modulating Olli and helping him keep himself in check weren’t working. Brian and Kris were the only other wild guys on the team; they were Olli’s only shot.

“I just need more time,” Olli said. “I gotta work harder.”

Brian’s instinct, as always when Olli said things like that, was to give him shit about being such a slacker—Olli, of all the fucking people, who _Sid_ sometimes had to chase out of the weight room. Usually Brian could chivvy Olli out of whatever funk he was in. He thought he was pretty good at it, even.

Brian very much doubted any amount of chirping could help Olli now. Probably only one thing could.

“Me and Brian, we’ll have to talk about it,” Kris said.

“We’ll do it,” Brian said. Everybody turned to look at him, but it was Kris’s gaze he felt burning into him, and Kris he responded to. “You want to,” Brian said simply. “And—” And he couldn’t stand to see Olli sitting there, looking so miserable. He just fucking couldn’t.

Kris opened his mouth, closed it again. His mind was a blank—or at least, he wasn’t sharing any of it with Brian. He shrugged and leaned past Brian to Olli. “If you want,” he said.

Brian didn’t need a bond to tell that Olli really fucking did not want to, and that it was still probably better than any of his other options at this point. “Yeah,” Olli said. “Okay.”

They talked through the details with the trainers. It was all familiar stuff to Brian—how to make the bond, how to keep it and maintain it. Lots of bodily contact, time together in their wild forms, sex if all participants were up to it. Olli listened to all of it with his eyes on the ground. He didn’t ask any questions, when the trainers offered. 

He agreed to meet Brian and Kris at the house. As soon as Brian and Kris were in the car, Kris said, “That poor fucking kid.”

“Yeah.” 

They drove a few minutes in silence, drifting in and out of each other’s thoughts—not _mind-reading_ , not like people usually meant it. Kris’s thoughts mostly weren’t verbal or even linear. He had plenty of opinions, but Brian couldn’t always tell what they were, unless Kris deliberately articulated them for him. But Brian could pick up Kris’s moods just fine and catch glimpses of what he was thinking about. Right now, the glimpses were of old Pens games, long before Brian’s time, with teammates he’d never met. They were of Kris barely holding onto himself, almost grateful for the penalty box that forced him to calm down.

Brian didn’t have any memories like that. He’d never really lost it on the ice that way. The season had started two months ago, and Brian had been with Kris most of that time. “He’ll be okay,” he told Kris. “He’s not gonna go through what you did. We’ll help.”

He felt a flash of that familiar, unknown feeling, and then Kris swung the door shut in his mind. “You sure you’re okay with it?” Kris asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Brian said, as firmly as he knew how. “You saw him in there, man.”

“Fuck,” Kris said.

They got to the house first; Olli had said something about grabbing some things from his apartment. If this worked, he wouldn’t be leaving again for a few days. Neither would Brian or Kris—they’d just volunteered themselves for IR for this. 

“Maybe we should grill tonight,” Brian said. “We’ve got time. Get some beers, do up some steaks, make kebabs.”

Kris looked at him for a long moment, until Brian felt a little twitchy. He wasn’t giving Brian anything. “Good idea,” he said finally. “You work on the vegetables.”

They were just starting a homestand, so Brian had laid in some fresh veggies without any particular plan in mind. There were even mushrooms, bought with some vague idea of pasta, but kebabs were more important. He set to work cutting the ends off the stems. 

He was quartering onions when Kris appeared at his elbow. “Olli’s like five minutes out. He texted.”

“Oh. Right.” There was a rhythm to chopping vegetables like there was to skating. Like skating, Brian could lose himself in it sometimes. He blinked at the bowl he’d set aside, full to the brim. “Shit, that’s a lot of peppers.”

“Maybe we’ll save some to cook later.”

“Good idea,” Brian said sheepishly.

Kris hummed thoughtfully. “You’re seriously okay with this?”

“Why do you keep asking me that? You think I want to leave Olli out in the cold? That kid is freaked out. He’s kind of freaking _me_ out, to be honest.”

“But maybe you don’t want to share, eh?” Kris said it teasingly, and if Brian looked up, he knew Kris’s eyes would be sparkling. Brian scoffed, keeping his head bowed over the last onion, half-sliced. Kris edged closer and bumped his hip against Brian’s. “Hey. Talk to me.”

“I thought we didn’t have to anymore,” Brian said lightly. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

Kris was quiet—thoughtful, but not in any way Brian could taste or get ahold of. Pensive. Brian held his breath, waiting for Kris to discover the thing Brian had tried so hard to keep submerged where Kris couldn’t find it. He was flushing hard, which surely didn’t help anything—thanks, genetics.

Kris sighed. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want. I just don’t want it to fuck things up with him.”

“I’m not going to fuck things up with Olli,” Brian said, stung. Kris could surely feel _that_.

“I know you’re not,” Kris said, voice and mind suddenly warm with sincerity. “You were really good with him, when he broke wild. And you’re really good with me.” He flashed Brian a smile, small and private, and then he walked out of the kitchen, leaving Brian with his mouth hanging open.

Whatever. Brian went back to the onions.

A few minutes later, Brian heard the front door open, the low murmur of voices. When they returned to the kitchen, Olli walked in with tusks—still in his own mind, but clearly hanging on by his fingernails. Assuming he still had those. His hands were jammed in his pockets, so it was hard to say. 

“Hey, man,” Brian said. “Tanger tell you? We’re cooking out.”

“Cool,” Olli mumbled. 

He declined the beer Kris offered him. The next moment, Brian felt an echo of creeping, red-tinged shame from Kris. _He probably can’t_ , Kris said. It took Brian a moment to get it—the tusks. Fuck. 

“Olli, you’re helping me with shish kebabs,” Brian said. “Kris can go do grill stuff.”

“ _Grill stuff_ ,” Kris muttered, but he went anyway, radiating approval to Brian. 

Okay, well, if Brian was good at this, he was going to take advantage. He brought the skewers and an empty baking sheet to the table. Next came the bowls full of onions and peppers and mushrooms. “A few skewers of each. Or you can mix them up, whatever.”

Olli nodded. His hands were out of his pockets now, but they were, in fact, still hands. He stuck mushrooms on the skewer in silence. 

“So, how you doing?” Brian said.

Olli shrugged and didn’t look up, which was about what that question deserved.

Brian tried again. “Have they, uh—what did they tell you about being in a bond?”

“They said it would help. Does it help you?”

“I mean I, uh. I had it pretty easy, you know? I broke wild because I was happy. And I’ve never had a hard time with keeping things under control, especially with Kris. Um. With Tanger.” There was that flush again, right on his face where anyone could see it. 

“I hate it,” Olli said, barely loud enough for Brian to hear. “I can’t control any of it. I get pissed off, or I get upset, and then I’m just—” He cut himself off and took a deep breath, rigid, gripped in some strong emotion—or _he_ was gripping it, with all his might. Slowly his jaw went square and wide. His nose flattened, like a snout, and his ears got pointier and hairier. New hair sprouted on his face, too, so pale it was almost invisible until it caught the light. 

His next words were distorted around the tusks, as big as Brian had ever seen them. “I can’t stop it. I try so hard.” And then he put his hands over his weird animal face, and his shoulders started to hitch.

“Hey,” Brian said helplessly. He was feeling a little hairy himself right now. His initial alarm was growing into something too big for him, too much—

Then came Kris’s soothing presence in his head, and the soothing rhythm of Kris counting out his breaths, like Brian had done for him so many times. Brian closed his eyes and let his inhales and exhales sync with Kris’s until the worst of the hairiness was past. When he opened his eyes again, Olli was still crying into his hands, oblivious to anything else.

The wolf—or whatever—was still there under Brian’s skin, even if it wasn’t visible on the outside anymore. The wolf had instincts that felt completely independent from Brian, although the wild community held differing opinions about that. Right now, the wolf wanted to get as close to Olli as possible and maybe lick his face.

Brian stood up and slid his hand along the back of Olli’s chair—plenty loud enough for Olli to hear—and then he let it fall onto Olli’s shoulder. Olli froze. Brian squeezed very gently. “It’s okay. Come on, dude, let’s check out the living room.”

It took a few moments of Brian murmuring reassurances and tracing along Olli’s breastbone with his thumb, but finally Olli got shakily to his feet and followed Brian. He sat on the couch and let Brian bully him onto his side until they were pressed together, back to front. Brian draped an arm over Olli’s waist and tugged him in that much closer. Good thing for them both Kris believed in deep couches.

“What’s happening?” Olli mumbled. 

There were a lot of things Brian could have said. “We’re bonding. It’ll help. I promise.”

Olli didn’t seem to have an answer for that. His breaths were shaky for a little longer, but slowly they evened out, in time with Brian’s. Brian stuck his human nose to the back of Olli’s neck and didn’t lick him even a little bit. Olli smelled of fear and industrial chemicals—his soap, probably. Brian had thrown all his old toiletries out pretty fast once he broke, but maybe Olli’s nose wasn’t as sensitive. 

Olli squirmed against him. Brian realized he’d been absently stroking Olli’s belly through his t-shirt. “Sorry, dude.” He balled up his fist to try and keep his hand to himself. There was a reason bonds rarely stayed platonic for long, but probably they should talk about that shit first. Instead he listened to Olli breathe and imagined he could feel his pulse under his skin.

Some untold time later, Brian felt Kris’s amusement, very distantly. He’d been dreaming, he realized. Something back home: a view east from a height onto an endless gray ocean. Slowly he surfaced and opened his eyes, though all he could see was the back of Olli’s blonde head. It felt like he’d been asleep for a long time. Olli still was, his breath even and deep.

Brian cast a line out, and immediately he felt the familiar nibble of Kris’s thoughts. _Dinner_ , Brian thought, question and apology all shaded into each other. 

Again that amusement. _The steak is marinating. You don’t have to get up yet_.

Brian didn’t really want to. Olli was sleeping heavily, and Brian wondered if maybe it’d been a while since he’d been able to do that. Brian was sticky-warm, though, and starving. He tried to jostle Olli as little as possible, sitting up, but it was probably inevitable that Olli snuffle awake and open his eyes. He looked himself again except for two bumps under the flesh of his bottom lip. 

“Hey, man,” Brian said, relieved beyond reason. 

“Hey,” Olli said, hoarse but human.

“You hungry?”

“Fucking starving,” Olli said, matter-of-fact, like Brian was used to. That was a relief, too.

It didn’t take much prodding to get Kris to fire up the grill and start the kebabs going. He ducked back in the house once they were on, looking a little damp and disgruntled about it, like a cat. Brian wondered at the universe sometimes, that it made Kris some kind of eagle-skunk chimera and not the cranky mountain cat he was clearly destined to be. “Fucking cold outside,” Kris groused.

“Why are you grilling in November?” Olli asked.

Before Brian could answer, Kris’s words came into his head, clear as a bell, _Because Dumo was freaking out, and making shish kebabs relaxes him._

_Um. What?_

“Dumo likes cutting up vegetables,” is what Kris said aloud. “Here, you want a beer now?”

Olli looked ready to refuse, out of—principle? Embarrassment? But Kris had already set a can in front of him, and after a moment, Olli tabbed it open. “It’s easier to bond if you’re a little buzzed,” Brian told him.

Olli eyed him dubiously, and then he took a long pull.

“So how do you feel about sex with us?” Brian said.

Olli peered at him over his beer. Deliberately he swallowed and set the can aside. “For the bond?”

“Yeah. It’s supposed to be easier that way. Or quicker, anyway. But we don’t have to, there’s other things—”

“You and Tanger did. Right?”

He and Tanger drove to the rink together, most days. They weren’t much of a secret. “Yeah.”

“How—” Olli’s voice caught. He took another swallow. “How do you feel about sex with me?”

Brian opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t a problem, but he felt Kris in his head, cautioning. Then words: _Don’t bullshit him_. Somewhere under that, tinged with an icy-cold trickle of hurt: _Don’t bullshit me_. 

Brian wasn’t sure if Kris meant him to get that last part. He took time to collect himself while Olli waited patiently. Olli was so calm, most of the time. He didn’t let anything ruffle him. Maybe that was why it was so hard to see him so freaked out, harder even than it would have been with one of the other guys. But he was intense, too—on the ice, in the weight room. He had a lot of focus. That could be hot, probably. He was taller than Kris by several inches and a little bit heavier; Brian wouldn’t say no to that either.

Most of all he was Olli, the kid who’d been around longer than almost anyone, Brian’s road roomie way back in 2013 when Brian was just a prospect called up to fill a hole in the Pens’ leaky boat, and Brian really wanted him to be okay.

“I’m into it.” He’d have said that before Kris’s prodding, too, but whatever. “We’ll make it good, eh?”

Olli took a deep breath. “Okay.”

So they were really doing this. All of it.

“But after the food, right?” Kris said. 

“Obviously,” Brian said, recovering. “No fucking on an empty stomach.”

Over the steak and kebabs they mostly talked about hockey. There was less adjustment with this year’s roster than usual, with so little turnover. Olli was settling in pretty well with Schultzy. Olli wondered how different it would be for him, playing with someone he wasn’t bonded to, than it was for them.

“I mean, I’ve played with Schultzy some this season,” Brian said. “It’s fine. Maybe a little easier, even, because Kris is on the bench if I need talking down.”

“Yeah, like that ever happens,” Kris said.

_???_

Kris ignored Brian’s burst of confusion. “You guys done? Dishes?” 

When the dishes were all dumped in the sink and the grill cleaning postponed to a later date, they were out of reasons for lingering in the dining room. “We could just watch TV tonight, if you want,” Kris said. “Get some of that body contact in. Don’t have to jump right in.”

“I want to get it over with,” Olli said. “Not that—I mean—you said it’ll help. I don’t want to wait.”

“We got you,” Brian said. He gave Olli’s shoulder a squeeze, then slid his hand down Olli’s bicep, appreciating. Olli lifted an eyebrow, unimpressed by Brian’s daring. Before Brian let himself reconsider, he leaned in and kissed Olli on the mouth, a quick there-and-gone kiss that left Olli wide-eyed, a little flushed. _Interested._ The kind of look Brian wanted to see on a guy he was about to have sex with.

There was nothing special about bonding sex, as Brian and Kris had learned a few months ago. Position, acts—they didn’t matter. It was about intent, mostly. “You have to want it, you know?” Brian said, once they were in the bedroom. Pulling his undershirt over his head, he added, “The bond. You can’t force it.”

Olli nodded solemnly, taking in every word, though Brian knew the trainers had to have gone through all this with him. He was serious about not waiting; he’d already stripped down to briefs and socks. Brian could tell he was a little freaked, because tusks were sprouting over his lip again. 

“Hey,” Brian said. He sat next to Olli on the bed, still in his jeans, but he’d worry about that later. Olli watched with huge eyes as Brian as lifted his hand—slowly, like petting an animal—and cupped Olli’s jaw. He thumbed across one of the tusks.

“Oh, shit,” Olli said, pulling away from him. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Nope,” Brian said firmly. “No hiding.” Gently he peeled Olli’s fingers away from his lips. Olli’s chest was heaving a little. No time like the present, Brian thought, and he leaned in and kissed Olli’s mouth. 

Olli tried to back away again. “You don’t want that.”

“Yes, I do,” Brian said. “It’s okay. Let me. Please?”

This time, Olli held rigidly still as Brian kissed him. Brian opened his mouth a little and tongued across the tusks. They were just teeth. They were maybe a little harder for Olli to kiss around, but Brian tried to make up for that.

He became aware of Kris, just behind him. _You getting in on this?_ Brian asked. The indifference he got back from Kris made him pull away from Olli and throw a glance over his shoulder. “Don’t stop for me,” Kris said.

Brian pushed a burst of impatience at him. What the fuck was Kris’s deal today?

Kris heaved a sigh. “Dumo says I can’t just laze around,” he said, coming closer. He gave Olli a smirk of reassurance. “I have to participate.”

Olli smiled uncertainly through his tusks. It was a pretty cute smile, honestly. Brian decided to kiss it again. Olli hummed against him, sounding almost—pleased. “Fuck yes,” Brian said. He slid his hands up Olli’s ribs, pressed them against his shoulder blades, buried under a summer’s worth of muscle. He licked around each tusk and then all along Olli’s mouth. It was the best thing in the world.

Kris cleared his throat. “You’ve got some fur on you,” he said.

Brian pulled back to find that his world had lost some of its color. His perspective was narrower, too. He reached up, and yep, there was the beginning of a muzzle. “Fuck,” he said, kind of. When it came to talking, Olli with his snout and tusks had it over Brian any day.

“He gets like this when he’s happy,” Kris said.

“Happy,” Olli repeated, deeply suspicious.

Brian ducked away from his stare, embarrassment squirming in the pit of his stomach. 

“Hey,” Kris said, bumping under Brian’s chin with his fist. “It’s a good thing. You like taking care of people.”

“You make me sound like somebody’s mom,” Brian protested—or tried, anyway. Olli might not have understood him, but Kris definitely could. He leveled that heavy stare at Brian, the one that saw all the way inside. Eagles were supposed to have good eyesight, right? Maybe that explained the talons and the beak Kris sported sometimes, hooked and sharp.

Kris sighed heavily and kissed the side of Brian’s muzzle. The effect was not at all the same as regular kissing, from Brian’s perspective, but then Kris scritched behind Brian’s ear, and that felt fucking great. “We’re going to talk about this later,” he said. “But we have to get Olli off first, right? And I think it’s my turn.”

While Kris settled in to make out with Olli, Brian used the time to step out of his jeans. Then he leaned back against the wall, arms folded, and watched. Sometimes he and Kris got rough, but tonight Kris was being very careful, all his moves telegraphed, all his touches gentle. Olli seemed to have forgotten about the tusks and was lipping enthusiastically at Kris’s mouth, even if the motion maybe couldn’t quite be called kissing. 

Brian wanted Olli, too. He wanted Olli in his head, sharing his thoughts. He’d agreed to this because the team asked him to, because Olli needed it, but now realization crept over him, as gradual as a sunrise: he wanted Olli for being Olli. And whatever it meant for him and Kris, well, he’d deal.

Some of that must have leaked through. Kris disengaged to cast a glance over his shoulder. “You gonna just stand there?” His tone was light, but there was a thread of concern running through the words.

“You guys look really good,” Brian said.

“Hell, yeah, we do,” Kris said.

Now or never. Brian crossed the room to Olli, who was looking a little pink under the new, fine sheen of hair. “Hey,” Brian said, smiling helplessly at him.

“Hey,” Olli said. He smiled back, a little toothily, but _hopeful_ —the best he’d looked in a month.

That was worth celebrating. Slowly Brian dropped to his knees in front of Olli. “I’m gonna suck you off now, okay?”

Olli nodded, wide-eyed. His fingers clenched reflexively in the bedclothes. The pink of his nipples stood out against his pale chest, and Brian wanted to get his mouth on them, too, but first things first, because here in front of his face was Olli’s dick, still mostly soft. Brian guided the wrinkled tip to his mouth and sucked gently. Olli inhaled sharply. Then Brian poked his tongue under the foreskin to lick at the head, and Olli just about choked. Bingo.

 _Lube_ Brian threw out, and a moment later, Kris pressed a bottle into his hand. Brian grinned; sometimes the bond really had its perks. 

Brian had gotten okay at this, the past couple of months. At least, Kris made a lot of appreciative noises when Brian went down on him, and the noises Olli was making were also pretty gratifying. With judicious use of hand and lube at the base and old-fashioned hard work at the head, Brian got him all the way hard. Then he eased off just a little: lighter touches. Gentler licks. Teasing.

“ _Dumo_ ,” Olli complained. In Brian’s head, there was an echo.

Brian almost pulled off altogether in surprise. He’d nearly forgotten what this was all for. Now that he was thinking about it, the new presence was almost weak enough to be his imagination. But not quite. Brian had other shit to worry about just now, though. He took Olli a little deeper and started sucking him in earnest.

He knew when Olli was about come, from the phantom tightness in his own belly. Brian retreated just far enough to keep from choking. Olli’s come tasted like come, pretty much. Brian swallowed it down to the last, and then he pulled off and sat back on his heels. 

Olli collapsed slowly back on the bed. “Fuck,” he said. 

There was that echo again. _Hey_ , Brian said. He got weak confusion in response. Well, Olli had just gotten his dick sucked. It was understandable. Brian crawled up onto the bed next to Olli and gently pinched one of those pink nipples. Olli made a discontented sound but otherwise didn’t respond. His eyes were shut tight. Brian propped himself up on and elbow and leaned in to lick the nipple.

Olli grunted. Brian pushed a bunch of feeling at Olli, all the ways Brian was feeling right now: smug and teasing and happy. 

Olli sat up so fast that Brian almost got a breastbone to the head. A thin thread of panic came through the bond. “Hey,” Brian said. “What is it?”

Olli turned frightened eyes at him. “It worked?”

Brian stroked Olli’s arm. “Yeah it did. That’s good, right?” Olli just stared at him, mouth open, while low-grade panic built behind the bond. “Hey, it’s okay.”

Kris had been lounging nearby for a while, enjoying the private show. Now he came and sat on Olli’s other side and wordlessly pressed his shoulder to Olli’s. Olli looked at him and then back at Brian, panic unabated. “You can just let me feel it, if you want,” Brian said.

Olli shook his head sharply. “I didn’t think it would work.”

Brian wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Kris picked up his slack. “You mean you didn’t want it to work? You didn’t want a bond?”

Olli stilled. After a moment, quietly, “You guys are going to know what I’m thinking now.”

“Eh.” Kris waggled his hand. “I don’t know everything Dumo thinks. Mostly feelings. If he’s mad or hungry. But if there’s shit he doesn’t want me to know, he just hides it. I don’t have a clue.”

Brian blinked at this description. He thought he was pretty straightforward, usually. Transparent. 

But now was not the time. “We talked about this, right? With the trainers. We have to practice to be able to read each other, otherwise it’s all just a cloud of—” Brian trailed off, at a loss.

“Feelings,” Kris finished.

“So you’ll feel it when I—lose it,” Olli said.

Brian exchanged a glance with Kris. “That’s kind of the point, dude.”

Olli looked at his hands, cupped together in his lap. After a moment, a trickle of feeling came through the bond: fear. Then something that felt a bit like embarrassment, but not quite. Brian tugged at it a little until finally he got something more fully-formed than a feeling, still not quite an image: an impression of being looked at while wearing a pair of briefs and nothing else.

Brian retreated, blinking. Olli slipped him a side-eye glance and returned his gaze to his hands, in his naked lap, where he wasn’t wearing anything at all and seemed one hundred percent fine with it.

 _Are you getting this?_ Brian asked Kris, and got negation in return. The bond wasn’t complete yet, then. 

Brian took a wild guess. “You don’t have to feel bad about going wild. It’s not your fault.”

“I should be able to control it,” Olli said.

“Hey,” Kris said sharply. “Like me? You think I should control it? Maybe I would not need a bond either, if I’m not so lazy.”

That brought Olli up short. Kris had his full attention now, and maybe it was best like this, Olli talking it out with someone who couldn’t feel what he was thinking. “I gotta piss,” Brian said, getting up off the bed. Neither of them paid him any attention.

He used the guest bathroom down the hall. Most of his clothes were back in the bedroom, but he found a a sweatshirt and a pair of gym shorts in the laundry room, not too dirty, and he put them on. He got another beer and turned on the TV. 

He was busy watching the Sens-Bolts pregame when he felt a spike of arousal across the bond. Two-way arousal, even. He palmed himself lazily in his shorts. The sensation grew slowly, finally cresting for a few short seconds and then flatlining again. Brian took his hand away, just enjoying the ghost endorphins. 

Kris came downstairs a few minutes later in sweatpants and nothing else. He collapsed on the couch next to Brian. Brian put an accommodating arm around his shoulders and pulled him in. “Did it take?”

“Yeah, we got it. Still pretty weak, though. We should probably go snuggle, you know.”

Brian exhaled a month’s worth of tension. This was it, then. A bond could be broken, in case of trade or other catastrophe, but short of that, this was them for the foreseeable future.

“You okay?” Kris asked.

“Me? Yeah, for sure. Feeling good,” Brian said, reflecting a little of that residual arousal back to Kris. He got the self-satisfied grin from Kris that he’d been aiming for. Kris nestled a little deeper under Brian’s arm. _You’re so fucking long everywhere,_ Kris had told him once. _I like it._ Brian had practically glowed at that, probably, lighting up the bond like a string of Christmas lights.

“Kris,” he began. Kris made a questioning noise. “What, uh. What’d you mean, when you said I hid stuff from you?”

Kris shrugged against him. “You got stuff you don’t want to talk about, you keep it locked up pretty tight.”

That didn’t seem right. Brian pushed an image of his grandma’s china hutch at Kris, the glass doors wide open.

Kris shook his head. “Nah, man. More like—” Brian got the strong impression of a bank vault, the door open just a crack. “It’s okay, though, right? That’s just how you roll. You’re so chill about everything, so there’s not a lot of bleed. Not like me.”

“What do you mean,” Brian said slowly, “not like you?”

Kris shifted out from under Brian’s arm. He sighed. “You know, needy. High-maintenance.” He caught sight of Brian’s face and laughed. “Come on, this isn’t a surprise. We bonded because I needed it, and I—” He cleared his throat. Brian could feel the tightness when Kris swallowed. “It makes a big difference. It’s so much easier out there, now. I’m really, uh. Grateful.”

Kris was right. It wasn’t a surprise. “Right,” Brian said.

“So I know it’s not fair to ask you to like, tell me shit. We always knew this bond was gonna be one-way, right?”

“I guess,” Brian said. What was he supposed to say, when Kris laid it all out like that? Kris needed him, that was all. Kris was _grateful_.

“But now with Olli, maybe I can, how do you say, pay it forward. Help him like you help me.”

Brian was hit with a bolt of jealousy so sharp and unexpected, he felt like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him. Kris being to Olli what Brian was to him. Kris being fucked up about Olli like Brian was right now. 

It took him a moment to remember how to breathe again. Concern radiated from Kris, but Brian just couldn’t handle that right now. “I’m going to check on Olli,” he said, and fled.

Olli was passed out on Kris’s bed. Kris must have coaxed him under the duvet before he left. Brian crawled in next to him. He hesitated a moment, but Olli didn’t so much as stir. Brian gave in and shifted closer, until he could press his face into Olli’s hair. Olli slept on, at peace. Brian closed his eyes.

\--

Brian woke up in near-total darkness. He lay still, trying to remember what day it was, never mind the time. Slowly he took in the sounds of two people sharing the bed with him. He remembered Olli, and Kris, and why he’d come up here and lain down still wearing clothes that might or might not have even been his.

His chest was tight. His throat ached.

Carefully he shifted away from Olli. In the glow of Kris’s bedroom clock, Brian could just make him out on Olli’s other side, his mouth gaping open. Drooling, probably. Puddles of drool were a constant hazard of sleeping with Kris.

Brian padded downstairs. They’d gotten the meat put away, but not the kebabs. He was just snapping the plastic storage container shut when he felt Olli. He turned, and there Olli was, sleep-rumpled. He’d put his boxers back on. 

“What time is it?” Olli asked. He scrubbed at one eye. 

He was really cute, and Brian felt a pang as he turned away again. “After midnight.”

“Shit.” Olli joined Brian at the counter. “Do you need help?”

“It’s cool, I’ve got it.”

Olli watched scrupulously as Brian scrubbed the tray the kebabs had been sitting on, and then the skewers. When Brian set the last one on a towel to dry and turned the water off, Olli said, “Is something wrong?”

“What?”

Olli shook his head, gaze inward. “You feel really—tight? Tense? I don’t know. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to feel.”

Brian opened his mouth to say it was fine, it was probably nothing—and realized he’d been about to lie. He was going to lie to Olli about Olli’s brand-new bond. “Fuck,” he said. He bent over the sink, elbows propped on the edges. He told himself he was just catching his breath, getting his footing back, and then the first tear dripped down his nose.

“Dumo?” Olli said sharply.

Brian shook his head, reaching for some kind of reassurance he could give Olli, something to ease that note of alarm out of his voice, but he couldn’t find it. He was fresh out. 

Olli squeezed Brian’s shoulder. Along the bond came a formless, wordless impression of comfort. All Brian could think of was how good Olli would be with Kris.

“What’s going on?” It was Kris, awake now, too, standing in the kitchen doorway. “Dumo?”

Brian straightened up and turned around. He’d meant to save this until morning, at least, when everyone had had a good night’s sleep. “I don’t think I can be in a bond with you guys.”

The response was immediate: a klaxon of _what the fuck_ from Kris and a weaker echo of alarm from Olli. “Why?” Kris demanded.

“Like you said,” Brian said. His voice was thick with tears now. Oh well, they both could already feel every damn thing he felt anyway. “We both knew it’d be a one-way bond. But now you guys have each other, so.”

Kris’s whole self flinched in shock. In _hurt_ , and Brian hadn’t intended that. He recovered quickly, though. “So what? So now you’re taking your chance? Getting rid of me?”

Brian shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel at all, which made it a completely pointless gesture in front of these two. “You guys have each other now. I know you’ll be really good for each other.” They’d played together all last year, almost exclusively, even without a bond. Maybe Sully would pair them up again, now.

“What about Olli?” Kris asked, pointing. Olli’s eyes widened with new alarm at the attention. “You said you wanted this with him.”

“I did,” Brian said. New tears spilled over. Fuck. “I do.”

“Then—” 

“But that’s not what this is about, right? It’s about what you guys need. It’s about hockey.”

Kris’s eyes were wet now, too. His feelings were coming across the bond in a torrent, like a firehose, too fast and heavy to identify any of them. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Brian shrugged. “You were only in this because you needed me, and now you don’t, anymore.” 

“Fuck _need_ ,” Kris said, as a familiar stench caught in Brian’s nose. Skunk. Brian should probably be trying to do something about that.

“Dumo?” Olli said. He approached carefully, like Brian might explode anytime. “Do you want to—to break the bond?”

Lying was pointless. “No.”

“Then what do you want?”

There were no words Brian could put it into that weren’t completely fucking stupid. He shrugged helplessly. 

“You don’t need _words_ ,” Kris said coming closer. “We’re fucking bonded. Just—show us.” _Show me_ , he pleaded, intentionally or not. Brian looked at them, Olli so earnest and worried, Kris still hurting from what Brian had said. He was bonded to these guys, for a little longer, and he liked them both so much.

He took a deep breath, and he let it surface: all the shit he’d been not thinking about for months. Kris smug in bed after getting Brian off. The prickle of his scruff when Brian kissed. That fond feeling that welled up in Brian’s chest when Kris scored a goal or got in somebody’s face. That tug in Brian’s gut when Kris smiled. How much Brian wanted it all to _mean_ something. How much Brian wanted Kris, and how much he wished Kris wanted him.

“You are such an idiot,” Kris breathed.

Brian wrapped his arms tighter around himself. “I know.”

“No, you fucking do not you, you fucking asshole,” Kris said. “You thought I was just—using you?” The words were inflected with new hurt.

“You needed me,” Brian pointed out. “That’s why we bonded.”

“You are so full of yourself,” Kris said, and then he pulled Brian down to his height and kissed him. As their lips touched, Brian was flooded with images: himself, just coming out of the shower with a towel around his hips. Him laughing in the car, after Kris had said something. Him chopping vegetables with extreme concentration. Through it all was that big formless emotion Kris had never bothered to identify for him.

Brian pulled away. “I don’t—”

“Of course I fucking want you,” Kris said. “What the fuck feeling do you think that is?”

“Gratitude?” Brian guessed. Kris huffed disbelievingly. “You’re always telling me how _grateful_ you are and how it’s all _one-way_ and how I don’t need you, and you’re right, I don’t. I just—”

“You just really want me a lot. For a long time.”

Brian nodded miserably.

Kris heaved a sigh and leaned up against the counter, next to Brian. Olli had disappeared somewhere, Brian realized. “I’m just fucking embarrassed, you know? I was a mess out there on my own, all that time. You help a lot. I don’t want you to feel like I, you know, like I take you for granted.”

“I never felt like that.”

“You do, though. And it’s my fault. I thought you knew.”

“I thought it was all for hockey,” Brian said. 

“Maybe for a little while,” Kris allowed. “I didn’t know you so well at first. But now I do.”

Brian swallowed. He was suddenly exhausted, barely able to hold himself upright. “So what happens now?”

Kris considered that for a few moments. “I think what happens is we reheat some of these kebabs and steak and go find Olli, and we have our midnight snack. And then we go to bed. And tomorrow we get up, and we see how things look, eh?”

“That sounds good.”

Kris took pity and let Brian be the one to do the reheating. It gave Brian a few moments to try and drag himself together. His success was mixed. He couldn’t quite believe yet what he thought Kris was telling him. It was going to take some time to fully take it in.

Just as the microwave dinged, Kris returned to the kitchen, with Olli trailing behind. “Sorry about all this,” Brian said to Olli. 

“You should be sorry,” Kris said. “All this drama. I thought you were supposed to be chill.”

Brian laughed, a little wetly. “I thought so, too.”

Brian felt another burst of that comfort Olli’d been trying to send him earlier. “Thanks, man,” Brian said. Olli gave him a shy smile.

“Come on, get your plates, we’re sitting on the couch,” Kris said.

The last of the west coast games was just finishing up: Ducks versus Avs in a shootout. They watched Gibson win it for the Ducks. Somehow Brian had ended up in the middle of the group this time, which felt like maybe it was intentional. _That_ made him feel stupid, like a little kid that had to be accommodated or he’d throw a tantrum.

“Shut up,” Kris said. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it.”

“Sorry,” Brian said reflexively.

Kris shook his head. “It’s a good thing we like you so much. Right, Olli?”

Brian turned to Olli, ready to roll his eyes and let Olli off the hook, but he found Olli looking unexpectedly serious. “Yes,” Olli said. Brian started to scoff, and Olli said, “I’ve liked you for years.”

“Um. What?” 

From the grunt Kris made, this was news to him too.

“Since we roomed together, I always had a crush on you.” Olli shrugged like this was not a big deal.

“Oh,” Brian said faintly. “So was that, like, weird? When the front office wanted us to bond?”

“Was that why you were freaking out?” Kris added, leaning past Brian.

Olli hesitated before he nodded. “That was part of it. But it doesn’t seem that important, now. Keeping it secret.”

“It’s because Dumo has so much drama,” Kris said. “He doesn’t leave any for anyone else.”

“Could you—” Brian paused.

“What?” Kris said, immediately alert.

This was so dumb. But as Brian hesitated, something flooded gently through the bond: a warm, rising tide. When he looked Kris was smiling with a fond look on his face that made Brian’s breath catch, because he’d _seen_ that look before. He’d just been too caught up in his head to realize what it meant. 

He took the plunge. “Could you guys call me Brian, sometimes?”

Kris blinked at him.

Brian fumbled, “It’s just, my hockey name is different from—” He stopped, embarrassed.

“From your real name,” Kris said.

Brian nodded.

“Brian,” Kris said, slowly, as though he were testing how it tasted in his mouth. “Brian.”

This did not make Brian feel less embarrassed about asking, but that same warm tide kept rising in his mind, little by little. On his other side, Olli pressed a little closer. Olli’s thoughts felt warm, like approval. “You can call me my real name, too,” he said.

Brian spent a moment stuck on what Olli’s real name was before Olli starting snickering. “Oh my god,” Brian said. Olli’s grin was extremely smug. “Fuck you, I’m so out of it.” 

“How about we go to bed, Brian?” Kris asked.

Those words could’ve gone two ways, but Brian knew which one Kris meant. Maybe the bond was still good for some things. “Fuck yes,” he said.

He could barely drag himself up the stairs after the others. Again, without meaning to, he found himself in the middle, and almost managed to keep from being embarrassed about it. 

“Stop thinking,” Kris slurred, already half-asleep.

Brian did.

\--

There was a conversation happening in Brian’s head. He couldn’t catch all of it, only a phrase here and there as they drifted past, not urgent. He heard his name, finally— _Dumo_ —and woke up. “Huh?”

“There he is,” Kris said. It was morning. Sun shone in through unfamiliar white curtains; Kris must have taken the blackout curtains down sometime yesterday, once he knew they weren’t playing for a few days. 

Brian’s mouth tasted faintly of grilled onion. “What are you guys doing?”

“Talking about you,” Kris said.

“Oh?” Brian tried to sit up. It was hard. He was maybe not all the way awake yet. “Like what?”

Kris’s hand slid across Brian’s stomach. It made Brian shiver. Then the hand retreated, to his disappointment. “Listen,” Kris said, sounding very serious. “We both want to stay in the bond, with you, because we like you. Not just because we need you.”

“Yeah?” It didn’t feel that much more likely than it had the night before.

“Yeah,” Olli said firmly, from Brian’s other side. 

Brian flopped his head on the pillow to look. Olli’s hair stuck up every which way, and his lower lip jutted out in fierce determination. 

“Look, you don’t have to say yet, okay?” Kris said. “How about right now we show you how much we appreciate you, and you think about it, and you let us know, eh?”

Olli nodded.

“You guys,” Brian complained. He threw his arm across his eyes, so if the prickling heat in them turned into tears, no one would see.

“Dumbass,” Kris said fondly.

Brian took a few heaving breaths, trying to keep himself under control. Thick fingers pulled on his shorts—the ones he’d borrowed from the laundry room and never changed out of. He braced himself on his heels just enough so that the shorts slipped down, around his ankles, and his morning wood was bare.

“We’re going to take care of you, and you’re going to believe us, right?” Kris said, far too close to his ear to be the one breathing on Brian’s dick.

“I’ll try,” Brian said shakily.

Delicious wet heat enveloped Brian’s dick. The next moment, his arm was taken painstakingly away from his eyes, and then he had Kris’s morning breath in his mouth. Brian gripped the sheets, and he let himself believe.

“There they are,” Kris murmured, and he brushed his lips over Brian’s pointy, furry ear.

[end]


End file.
